Why you really can't always believe what you read in the news…

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“People are useless in the morning… sort of a bit like zombies!” says makers of zombie game

Women: are you significantly grumpier in the morning than your menfolk? Do you find it hard to stop yourself being an absolute monster before, say, 8am? Yes you do! At least, according to the Daily Express:

GRRR POWER! WOMEN WAKE UP GRUMPIEST

No doubt plenty of wives and girlfriends would disagree, but a survey claims women are grumpier in the morning than men.

It also says men get up earlier, hit the ground running and are more on the ball when they arrive at work.

The proof? Well, more women said they had been accused by work colleagues of “being in a strop” first thing in the morning.

More than half of the 2,000 adults quizzed said they cannot bear to talk to anyone until at least 8am – over an hour after the average wake-up time of 6.49am.

Fortunately, help is at hand, because there’s a very very good chance that this is absolute codswallop. In fact, it’s an incredibly shoehorned piece of PR, which runs thusly: people find it hard to get up in the morning, and that means when they do get up they can be tired, irritable and unsociable for a while, and can sometimes not really be aware of what’s going on… tired, unsociable, irritable and unaware in the same way a zombie kinda, sorta is… says…

The survey by the makers of the Zombie Underground game app also found that almost a third dodge conversation with their colleagues first thing in their morning, while a fifth even ignore their children.

Zombie Underground, for those who aren’t aware, is a game which is set in the London Underground, which perhaps explains the vast distance one has to travel between the content of this article in the Express and the product it’s promoting.

In fact, putting the press release into Churnalism.com, it’s clear that an article based on exactly the same source copy appeared in the Daily Mail back in November, albeit without the additional angle expressing how much worse women are than men:

The grumps who can’t bear to chat before 8am: Nearly half of adults avoid talking to anyone for first hour after they wake up

You may be one yourself, or you may live or work with one… the grumps who cannot bear to talk to anyone first thing in the morning.

Now a survey of 2,000 Britons has found that after waking up at an average time of 6.49am, it’s another hour and 15 minutes before the grumps feel up to having a conversation.

So, it’s not until around 8am that anyone should dare say a word to them.

So, despite contributing less than 30% of the copy in the final article, Eleanore Robinson from the Express still felt happy to put her name on story. Perhaps she put it together early in the morning, and wasn’t really with it just yet…